Robert Bork 1927 – 2012

Robert Bork, who died today at the age of 85, was a former U.S. solicitor general, an antitrust scholar who taught (Bill Clinton, among others) at Yale, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals and an ardent foe of judicial activism. But he is best known for his failed nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987, which marked a turning point in our politics. “Borking” entered the Beltway lexicon. Political differences became an excuse for attacking someone’s moral character.

It is also important to remember, apart from the disgraceful actions of Ted Kennedy and Biden (which unsurprisingly are accurate reflections of their characters), is that Anthony Kennedy was finally nominated and filled the vacancy on the Supreme Court bench. Given the cases that have since been heard and the decisions, and Kennedy’s arguments and votes in those cases, the effect of disgraceful actions. BTW, Ted Kennedy attacked Bork in terms reminiscent of Democratic attacks on Romney before the election:

Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy … President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice.

Correction: the effect of those disgraceful actions has been devastating.

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Liberty Quotes

The fact that censorship is progressivism’s default position regarding so many things is evidence of progressives’ pessimism about the ability of their agenda to advance under a regime of robust discussion. It also indicates the delight progressives derive from bossing people around and imposing a particular sensibility, in the name of diversity, of course.— George Will